A STB is any electronic device designed to produce output on a conventional television set, having one or more inputs connected to a communications channel such as telephone, ISDN, optical fiber, or cable. The STB usually runs software to allow the user to interact with the programs shown on the television in some way. An IRD functions to receive and decode an incoming transport stream, often in MPEG-2 format, and present the output to the user on a television set. The user interacts with the TV and the STB via a remote control.
The IRD is connected to a satellite dish via a cable. Although many channels are received by the dish, the IRD is programmed to decode only the channels to which the user has subscribed and paid for.
Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) television services such as DirecTV, and DISH Network, (owned by Echostar), broadcast via satellite television and radio programs to consumers who purchase or lease IRDs for receiving such programs and pay a monthly subscription fee to receive a selected array of channels. The DBS companies offer a very wide and extensive variety of available channels priced at different levels, as well as special programs which are sometimes known as “Pay per View” (PPV), for which the subscriber must order individually and for which a one time viewing fee is charged.
It is well known that there are people known as hackers or pirates who attempt to obtain DBS services without paying the appropriate subscription fee, thereby depriving the broadcasters and DBS companies of a return on their investment, and also ultimately depriving artists of royalties on their creative works since such royalties often depend on the number of viewers who subscribe to a particular broadcast. The DBS companies have attempted a wide variety of Electronic Counter-Measures (ECMs) but, for each ECM, people In the hacker and Piracy community develop methods and apparatus (hacks) to overcome it and continue to obtain free satellite broadcasts, including premium channels as well as PPV broadcasts. For technologically inclined hackers, each ECM presents an interesting software or hardware challenge that must be overcome in order to prove to himself and others in the hacker community that he or she is smarter than the engineers who design the circuits and ECMs. For other hackers, there is an anti-establishment view or a something-for-nothing objective.
Many of the DBS hacks involve applying a voltage to the programming enable pin of the flash memory chip (for example the R P pin in ST M29W320) and then reprogramming the boot sector of the flash memory by use of a JTAG (Joint Test Action Group, IEEE 1149.1) device to read from and write to the TSOP (Thin Small Outline Package) flash.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a solution to the hacking problem with IRDs.
It is a further object to provide a hardware lock to prevent boot sector reprogramming.